Painesville child killer James W. Cooper Jr. up for parole

Jeff Forman/JForman@News-Herald.com
David Gelhausen was not quite two when his twelve-year-old aunt Rebecca Sue Gelhausen was raped and murdered by James Cooper. Cooper will be eligible for parole in June. The photo of Rebecca Sue Gelhausen is shared on another family member's Facebook page.

David Gelhausen was just days before his second birthday when his 12-year-old aunt, Rebecca Sue Gelhausen, was kidnapped from Painesville and then raped and murdered.

The victim’s body was discovered Feb. 17, 1974, in a wooded Perry Township area. The horrific crime continues to haunt Rebecca’s remaining family members 40 years later.

Her killer, James W. Cooper Jr., now 64, was originally sentenced to die in the electric chair after a Lake County Common Pleas Court jury convicted him of strangling Rebecca to death.

But in 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Ohio’s revised Death Penalty Law, resulting in Cooper and 119 other condemned prisoners receiving lighter sentences.
Cooper’s sentence was then commuted to life with parole eligibility in 15 years. He is once again up for parole June 24.

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“I think it’s ridiculous we have to go through this parole process every couple years,” said David Gelhausen, of Perry Village. “He was the first person to get sentenced to the electric chair and then not get it. They said it was cruel and unusual punishment. What he did to my aunt wasn’t cruel and unusual?”

‘He was cold and unremorseful’

Lake County Prosecutor Charles Coulson recalls hearing about the case as a young assistant prosecutor.

“He took a towel and put it around her neck, took her to a stream and slowly strangled her,” said Coulson. “He’s evil and no good. We’re preparing letters to hopefully keep him in prison the rest of his life. He should never walk free.”

Lake County Sheriff’s Major Charles Caldwell, a lieutenant with the office at the time, took the confession from Cooper that helped put him on death row.

“I don’t know that he had a motive. I know this much: He was out on bond for a previous sexual assault on a girl — I believe she was 14 years old — and an armed robbery,” Caldwell said. “When all Ohio death sentences were commuted to life in 1978, I told the parole board I felt that was his break that he got. I don’t know what his motives were. I don’t care what his motives were. He needs to spend the rest of his life in prison. I see some of these family members quite often. I reach out to them.”

Caldwell said he hopes as many people as possible sign an online petition to keep Cooper at the Grafton Correctional Institution in Lorain.

“This victim needs and deserves us to speak on her behalf,” he added. “We owe this to that 12-year-old girl and her family to stop this guy from being out on parole. Here was a 12-year-old girl raped and murdered. Her body was left like a piece of garbage. It’s ugly and it’s insane. It’s one of the most vicious and heinous crimes I’ve worked on in my 49-year career.

“I think he murdered her because he didn’t want a witness like he had in the first (rape). He was very cold and unremorseful. I can still remember her laying on that slab in the morgue and taking fingerprint impressions on her tiny little hands. There’s a satisfaction knowing you’ve removed someone like this from society.”

‘It was very rough for the family’
The victim’s mother, Mrs. Louis Gelhausen, told The News-Herald in 1974 that she last saw her daughter, a sixth grader at Walnut Middle School, alive at 1 p.m. Feb. 17 that year.
Rebecca, described as a quiet girl who loved books, had been on her way to Painesville Recreation Park to go ice skating with a couple girlfriends. She never made it.

“I found out later that her friends had already left,” her mother said. “When she didn’t come home after dark Saturday, we started to look for her.”

Sherry Nelson, Rebecca’s cousin who lived in Madison Township at the time, recalled the search for the 4-foot-10 inch girl with light brown hair and freckles.

“She was baptized just before she got murdered,” said Nelson, who now lives in Missouri. “I was only 20 when she got murdered. We were hunting for her, our whole family was. I remember when they called and said they found her in the river. It was very rough for the family — her dad had a stroke. She was a very lovely child. I remember James Cooper. His dad was a minister.”

Rebecca has two brothers and two sisters who are still alive, but other family members said memories of the case are still too painful for them to speak of yet.

Madison Township resident Floyd Swank was a former neighbor and close friend of the Gelhausen family.

“We used to run around Painesville together as a group,” said Swank. “I had a secret crush on Becky when I was younger. She was a sweet, caring person. We all sat by each other on the bus every Sunday to Faith Baptist Church. It was hard to ride the church bus on Sundays after that. It’s like your heart was ripped out.”

Swank was 11 when the murder occurred.

“We used to go walking in Recreation Park and skip rocks,” he said. “As kids, we really didn’t worry about being kidnapped. You didn’t hear of that then. It was devastating to everybody in the neighborhood. I think it’s sickening they would even think of releasing him on parole.”

“The crime he committed against Becky was so heinous,” said Mace. “I don’t see why he should get out. I was 17. My mother and her mother were sisters. We all went down to the river searching for her.”

`She cannot speak for herself’
At the time of the murder, Cooper was a 23-year-old who worked at a Grand River marina.

He forcefully took Rebecca from Recreation Park to a secluded area on the Grand River near Vrooman Road — what today is Mason’s Landing Park in the Lake MetroParks — and sexually assaulted, strangled her and left her for dead.

Several witnesses reported seeing Cooper trying to get his car out after it got stuck.

“There was a lot of very good evidence,” said Caldwell. “Half of the dish towel was found in the trunk of the vehicle he was driving, the other half was around her neck. I was at the FBI National Academy in Quantico and had to come back for the trial.”

The Adult Parole Authority convinced Strickland to reject his plea to be released after noting he showed “absolutely no insight or remorse” for a “very vicious and heinous crime.”

The Parole Board also reported his institutional conduct as only “fair” and found “substantial reason to believe he will engage in further criminal conduct if released.”

One of Cooper’s defense lawyers, Gregory Gilson, has died. The other, Leo J. Talikka, is retired but instantly recalled the case when contacted recently.

“I have tried many, many other murder cases. But this was really a tough case. It was a horrible, horrible murder,” said Talikka. “I was court-appointed and I did not want the case. My oldest daughter was the same age as the victim. But I was forced to take him. I had death threats because of that case.

“The trial lasted 18 days. Two restaurants here in Lake County refused me service because of the publicity. One waitress said, ‘Are you Mr. Talikka?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ They said, `Well, I’m not gonna serve you because you worked too hard to get that (racial epithet) off.’”